Visitors of our website must have noticed an
approximately week-long interruption in the operation of www.iwf.net
around the turn of 2004 and 2005. We feel we owe you an
explanation for this failure which obviously caused some annoyment
for those interested in weightlifting and in the IWF and wishing to
visit our homepage.

Our traditional “Lifter of the Year 2004″ voting –
published also on the IWF website – seems to have induced Iranian
fans of Hossein Reza Zadeh to submit their votes by the hundred, or
even by the thousand. At the beginning, it was pleasing news. We
were happy to note such a great interest in our Vote.

However, ballots – 99 per cent of which turned out
to be invalid – started to invade the IWF by fax and e-mail sent at
the given mailbox address. To make things worse, unfortunately some
hackers or crackers, ill-willing individuals, joined this “game”,
virtually blocked the website, and kept sending robot-generated,
false voting e-mails by the tens of thousands daily (!), including a
number of viruses as well.

Attacked in such a cruel and nasty manner, the IWF
website had to be closed down temporarily. Additionally, the IWF
Secretariat’s server and mailbox system had to be totally cleaned
and reconstructed. This cost us lots of money and effort – and
naturally some time, as well.

As you can see: the website is again in full
operation. We wish to apologize for any inconvenience caused to our
visitors – this was truly against our wish and beyond our
control.